Sunday, April 18, 2010

Yes, I'm alive. No, I'm not returning to regular blogging anytime soon. But I had a thought and wanted to note it down.

There are many theories about why there is an outbreak of obesity among affluent nations and affluent segments of not-so-affluent nations. It's the high fructose corn syrup. It's the carbs. It's the trans-fats. It's the pollution. It's the vaccinations. Etc.

There is one global phenomenon that pretty much tracks the growth in obesity and that is the growth in adoption of personal computers at work and home.

Computers make you fat.

Or, to be a little more detailed, the expansion of computers combined with the increasing speed of the data pipelines - good enough now in many places to stream movies and conduct first-person shooter games over the internet - changes the human environment to such an extent that opportunities for physical motion has been dramatically reduced and the always-on (and thus always intrusive) connection discourages us from turning to other things. Let me check that email one more time!

Instead of walking to a colleague's office, you IM or email her. Work becomes keyboard and screen interaction and it becomes almost inescapable. You spend your evenings answering emails or preparing for tomorrow instead of taking a walk around the neighborhood or just puttering in the yard or taking care of some odd job around the house. It's not just that we sit in front of computers (we've had TVs a lot longer), but the combination of the PC and the perpetual connection that narrows our physicality. I have 8 emails on my company issued phone right now from my previous manager (who can't seem to understand I don't work in that department anymore), sent since close of business Friday. Leisure time vanishes.

The high-speed and highly fragmented mode of interaction that is paradigmatic of current computing reinforces behaviors that are conducive to obesity. The explosion of hyper-processed food fits a form of life that needs a hand free for the device. Phone, mouse, game controller; if it interferes with the flick of the wrist, it's worse than toast. Toast you can eat with one hand. I stare in awe at the variety of prepared foods - fresh, frozen, shelf-stable - that are available to me.

When the physical representation of the society is molded around the ideal of a man sitting with an electronic device in one hand and accomplishing important business with the other, that mold affects how our public spaces are arranged, how our food is conceptualized, produced and delivered, how our interactions with our social circles (work, family, friends, associations) are channeled.

Games. Social networks. Business. Video calls. Ubiquitous computing. Perpetual connections. Thoroughly mediated experiences. The mundane corners of my life, things like the kinds of food I can find on the shelf and the presumption that I will always carry a GPS enabled device on my person, have been colonized by the ever present computer.

It isn't the sole reason for obesity. I eat too much for the amount of calories I burn. That's the mechanics of the problem. But it is a powerful factor in the environment that makes it so easy for me to type, munch, type, munch, type, munch, answer that incoming call....

The expansion of my ass is directly in proportion to the expansion of my time in front of a computer.